Great, great, memorable story. McPherson’s narrator relates the story of a former train waiter, Doc, in brilliant fashion. The narrator, an old-school protégé and friend of Doc, addresses his tale to a rookie waiter with the angry passion of the experienced teaching the ignorant. Thing is, that rookie waiter – referred to as “youngblood” – is addressed in the second person, meaning the rookie waiter is the reader. There is no distance between the story and the reader, making its portrayal of race and age and the 20th century all the more powerful. And that’s quite a trick on McPherson’s part.

The selection:

They can’t lay me off for fucking up: I know this business too well. And so they hire you, youngblood, for the summer when the tourists come, and in September you go away with some tips in your pocket to buy pussy and they wait all winter for me to die. I am dying, youngblood, and so is this business. Both us will die toghether. There’ll always be summer stuff like you, but the big men, the big trains, are dying every day and everybody can see it. And nobody but us who are dying with them gives a damn.